A Family of K-12 Educators’ Innovative Responses to Overcome COVID-19 Challenges: Researchers’ Reflexivity Accounts

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented challenges as well as opportunities in different aspects of life and various settings, including K-12 public schools. This chapter presents the first author’s reflexive accounts of her family’s innovative responses and transformative experience to overcome the challenges as an educator and researcher, as well as her scholarly discussions with the second author regarding critical incidents she had identified. As researchers, we report our reflexivity process based on theoretical grounding, examine critical events, analyze themes and trends that emerged during the pandemic, co-construct meanings, and develop our positions. As a result, three themes emerged from our reflections: Shared physical and virtual spaces: family, school, and work all in one; learning and growing together in the shared space; and innovation to combat disparities between urban and suburban school districts. Our research reflexivity provides insightful implications to inform educational practice and improve the current educational systems. It also generates some theories to enrich current literature while revealing some directions for future research.